


Cushion Canyon

by SuperSecretAgentQrow



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluff, Inspired by a Class Writing Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-05 07:28:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15859026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuperSecretAgentQrow/pseuds/SuperSecretAgentQrow
Summary: When Qrow inadvertently gambles away the rights to his girlfriend, he takes things into his own hands.Okay, hemeantto do something decisive but like, Winter is beyond scary when she's angry. What is it his sister keeps saying about having a spine?





	Cushion Canyon

Qrow is always aware of the little kinds of distance between him and Winter. He’s a local blues celebrity in an up-and-coming band; she’s a peerless prosecuting attorney for the city. He’s poorly shaven and his clothes are wrinkled from sitting atop the laundry pile; she’s put together and classy even _without_ the thousand-dollar suits. He’s a nobody making something out of nothing, and she gave up everything her family wealth promised to make a name for herself.

Right now the biggest distance in his mind is the cushion separating them on her couch. He knows there’s only really five feet between the ends of the large and impossibly-comfortable sofa, but the furniture has never felt like such a daunting chasm in the eight months he’s been dating his catch of a girlfriend (which is honestly eight months longer than he expected this to last when they first hooked up). It's a real treat to be able to see her in worn sweatpants and a yoga tank top as opposed to business-and-death courtroom black, and he would jump her in a heartbeat if he wasn’t certain he’d plummet to his doom down the Cushion Canyon.

Just a minute ago she’d caught him mumbling outside her apartment door, discreetly trying to find a spare key that didn’t exist. Winter had known something was up from the get-go - while she spends her Sunday mornings reviewing court proceedings, Qrow tends to sleep off a modest and recurring hangover from late nights out celebrating sold-out gigs and pretending to still be young and reckless.

But instead of chewing him out, like she did when he borrowed her father’s pen to sign autographs and promptly lost it, or after he mistook her vibrator for a party popper and used it to surprise his niece at her birthday party, Winter just sits on the far side of the couch, legs tucked underneath her while the speakers play a song he can’t place (it’s one of his, though exactly which one he isn’t totally sure. Winter is a big fan, even if she’ll refuse to admit it till the day she dies). From the corner of his eye he glances at her shapely face, framed in both rectangular glasses and flowing silvery-white hair released from its usual severe bun as she turns another page, and it’s a good thing he isn’t standing cause he’s weaker in the knees than after three shots of vodka. Oh, what he’d do to not be in deep shit at the moment…

The swift clap of her manila folder closing reminds him that he’s in _really_ deep shit. Winter sighs and remotely pauses the music player before shifting her posture, all two inches of a straightened back transforming her from Lazy Sunday Girlfriend into Federal Prosecutor Winter Schnee. The reading glasses seem to magnify her gaze on him, and Qrow instinctively cranes his head to a random corner of her ceiling and idly flattens his unkempt black hair. So this is what it feels like to be one of those poor fuckers too dumb to drop their case when they find out she’s trying against them. Funny how someone ten years his junior can make him feel so small with just a look. What does he plead this time, anyways?

“Nice thing you’ve done with the walls,” Qrow opens his defense with. Man, he’d just fit _right in_ at law school...

Winter rolls her eyes with that practiced body language of _cut-the-bullshit_. “I haven’t _done_ anything with the walls, Qrow. Why are you here again? You’re only awake before noon if I personally drag you out of bed or if you’ve fucked up again. Unfortunately for you one of those scenarios has already been ruled out, so you’d best hope I was reading something moderately amusing.”

Shit...Winter never reads anything remotely nice. At the very least the cushion between them give him about two seconds to bolt to the door and escape when she eventually squeezes the truth out of -

“Come on, you hopeless bird-brain - goodness, Qrow!” Winter exclaims when he somehow jumps _further_ into the sofa after she sneaks up against his side while he muses about life, death, and death by girlfriend. “That bad, is it? It appears Fearless Qrow Branwen is afraid of at least one thing. Look, darling, you understand you can tell me anything, alright? It’s not like I’m actually going to flay you as punishment - at least outside of bed I suppose,” she adds under her breath.

Well, she just gave him express permission, so he might as well get this over with before she fetches an actual whip. “Even if, _hypothetically_ , maybe me - or someone else maybe uhh - and hypothetically maybe traded you away hypothetically…?” Qrow mumbles from behind a makeshift pillow bunker.

Winter’s face drops faster than a judge’s gavel. “What.”

Slowly, quietly, and with a number of redactions for the safety of his poker buddies, Qrow explains that he was on a roll during last night’s normal clandestine bar poker night - a losing roll, of course, but his hands were slowly but surely getting better. Eventually he got it - the flush cards of his fantasies, but as fate would have it he tossed in his last coin as soon as he drew the hand. _Of course_ Qrow couldn’t pass up this once-in-a-shattered moon round (“No, really, it was the flush to **die** for,” he reiterates to Winter who knows exactly where this is going), so with nothing left he pleaded with his buds to let him in with an IOU of some kind. To garner some semblance of sympathy he shook his wallet to show just how broke he was, only remembering at the last moment that he had one thing left in it.

It was an old photo, a picture he had snapped on a whim mere days before they’d become an item, Winter’s hard and dispassionate facade dropped for a moment as her sky-blue eyes turned to inadvertently glance at the phone in a gaze that _still_ sends his stomach in somersaults. Much too casually for the weight of the implication it clattered onto the old wooden table, landing right on top of the discard pile.

So they had bet on it, and with it Winter’s number. “Yeah, so...turns out a flush isn’t _actually_ the best thing in poker...” Qrow admits sheepishly. And now Winter doesn’t belong to him.

She’s silent when he finishes. Qrow peeks out and finds her facing away from him, white hair obscuring her face from him, supple shoulders shaking in that restrained way he knows is holding back a tirade of emotions, and he knows he’s done it this time. Well, at least this will give him a helluva lot more songwriting material now that the best thing to ever happen to him is over. “Oh, baby,” he groans wiping a hand down his face, “I can’t tell you how sorry I am. For what it’s worth, these past few months with you meant the world to me, and at the very least I hope you WAAGH!”

Qrow’s bittersweet and heartfelt confession is cut short by a speeding pillow, and Qrow hears Winter’s rare laughter before his back hits the carpet. She lies down and hangs off the edge of the couch, her shapely nose just barely brushing against his own. There’s mirth in that terrifying and beautiful face, and the only thing reminding him that this isn’t a dream is the dull ache in his face and his heart from when he thought it was all over.

“Sheesh, sometimes I forget how gullible you romantic types are,” Winter giggles again, swiping the pillow from the floor and whacking his sides with it. “What, did you seriously think I’d be mad you traded away ownership of me at a drunk poker night? News flash, Branwen - you never _did_ own me, smartass. Sorry to burst your manly bubble, you poor thing.”

She slides all the way off the couch, and Qrow wheezes when she sits right on his stomach. “Wait, you’re really not mad? I was so sure I was a dead man walking when I lost your picture.”

His girlfriend grins dangerously. “Well, you did gamble away the rights to date night, and it seems this friend of yours will get his _one_ date in good faith. In the meantime,” she continues suggestively as a finger trails up his check, “I think you owe me an apology. Preferably for the next hour or so.”

When she yanks him off the floor and pushes him back on the couch, Qrow makes a mental note to always bet on flush hands. And to find that damn pen sometime.

**Author's Note:**

> Surprise! I'm actually not dead! I mean, long breaks between posting things was _already_ kind of a norm if you've read anything I ever post, but a break like this...
> 
> Yeah. I owe y'all a teeny explanation, huh? Don't worry, I posted a chapter on each of my other running stories explaining what's going on, but TLDR **I'm going on hiatus** till about the end of the year ;-;
> 
> Also funny story, but this prompt my writing professor gave me was actually inspired by his parents! His dad won his mom in a poker game at Pearl Harbor before the attack. World works in mysterious ways and all that, doesn't it?
> 
> I missed being on this site. Too bad this is how I'm announcing I'll be gone for a while...
> 
> Thanks for staying with me and I can't wait to give you more of what you like!
> 
> SSAQ


End file.
